geek.teacher

I love to learn new things.  Unfortunately, sometimes I don’t particularly enjoy the things that I learn.  Especially when it’s something that I never particularly thought about before but should have.  In this case, a couple stories have popped up recently about autism and insurance coverage.  I don’t know which depresses me more: that insurance companies typically do not cover autistic therapies or that I didn’t already know that, when I have had autistic students for several years now.

First, here’s a story about how hard having an autistic child can be on the parents.  In general, I think having a child with a disability can be very difficult for parents.  I’ve seen the gamut, from parents who have adopted disabled children and see nothing but joy in their children, to parents struggling to deal with the disability, to parents in denial their child has a disability.(1)

Over the past year and a half, Sharky’s three parents — Lillie, her ex-husband, Ted Munat, and her partner, Stormy Addams — have visited a dozen doctors, therapists and classrooms, yet they still can’t fill big gaps in their son’s treatment. “Everywhere we have gone they are pushing you in different directions,” Stormy Addams, 43, said. “Or they are pushing against you.”(2)

Now some good news: Florida has passed legislation forcing insurance companies to cover autistic children.  It almost didn’t pass because some people wanted it to cover more conditions, such as Down’s Syndrome.

Under an earlier House plan pushed by Republican Rep. Andy Gardiner of Orlando, Florida’s children’s health insurance program would have been expanded. It also required health insurance companies to cover $36,000 a year in therapy for all children with disabilities, up to $108,000 a child.

Gardiner, whose son has Down syndrome, visibly struggled with supporting the autism-only Senate plan. Geller, too, said he liked the House plan. But his Republican colleagues in the Senate wouldn’t take it. And Geller didn’t want to end up with nothing by wanting everything.

”Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Geller said later.

So that’s my shame of the day, that I didn’t know the parents of autistic parents have to foot the bill themselves because insurance normally doesn’t cover it.  Or they fight with their school district for them to cover it, which is just unpleasant all around.

(1) When you have to tell a parent that in the clinical sense their child has mental retardation, hope she does not go home and tell him “Your teacher said you’re retarded.” If she does do that, hope that you have had the good fortune of the time needed to build a real relationship with him to talk him down from the emotional cliff that places him on. Also useful for painful parent-teacher conferences where you describe the struggles he’s having, and she goes off on him for not trying enough, when all you want to do is scream “LADY, HE CAN’T READ, AND IT’S NOT BECAUSE HE’S NOT TRYING.”

(2) Sharky Munat and Stormy Addams are two of the greatest names ever.